My goodness, how I love the term "constrables." I'm going to start
tossing that in to casual conversation and see what happens.

Because several people have asked for the Clay Shirky reference, I'm
including it here: The text I'm referring to is Here Comes Everybody,
a fantastic book on the social revolution resulting from the mass
adoption of new media technologies. Shirky's a professor at NYU and
the book is a thrilling read. Among is arguments is one that I think
all of the members of this listserv may identify with:

"Life teaches us that motivations other than getting paid aren't
enough to add up to serious work. And now we have to unlearn that
lesson, because it is less true with each passing year.... The
twentieth century, with the spread of radio and television, was the
broadcast century. The normal pattern for media was that they were
created by a small group of professionals and then delivered to a
large group of consumers. But media, in the world's literal sense as
the middle layer between people, have always been a three-part affair.
People like to consume media, of course, but they also like to produce
it ("Look what I made!") and they like to share it ("Look what I
found!"). Because we now have media that support both making and
sharing, as well as consuming, those capabilities are reappearing,
after a century mainly given over to consumption. We are used to a
world where little things happen for love and big things happen for
money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people
to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love."